Green - Seve Golfs Flawed Genius (The Updated Definitive Biography)

About the Author

Robert Green is the Editor in Chief of Golf International magazine. He has been the recipient of three British Sports Journalism Awards and is the author of four previous books on golf, including Trouble-Shooting , an instruction book written with Seve, with whom he also scripted an instruction video. His own golf is not of genius level, although he has inflicted himself on over 400 golf courses on five continents, bringing greenkeepers around the world to their knees. Somehow, he once won a golf writers tournament. He lives in Islington, North London, with his wife and several putters.

Seve: Golfs Flawed Genius

A golfing legend with five major championships to his credit, Severiano Ballesteros was one of the games great heroes charismatic, charming, fiery, unpredictable. His untimely death in May 2011, after a prolonged struggle with cancer, left his sport bereft.

Over the course of Seves career, no other golf writer enjoyed such regular contact with him as Robert Green meetings, interviews, conversations and meals together, all of which led to a video and a golf instruction book. This book draws on the material and insights gathered during those collaborative years to capture the real Seve. It describes his family and upbringing in Spain and recalls his great on-course triumphs not least his enormous role in the revival of the fortunes of the Ryder Cup, which thanks to him is today one of the worlds great sporting events as well as his calamities. Dramatically and insightfully, Green recalls the great wins in the Open and the Masters, and also those titles that excruciatingly slipped from Seves grasp.

The book also examines Seves darker side: his controversial and very public spats with officialdom and his sometimes tempestuous private life, including his divorce from Carmen, the daughter of one of Spains wealthiest men and mother of his three children, to whom he was married for 17 years. And even after his death, his legacy could not rest.

Above all, though, it is Seve the golfer who takes centre stage, resulting in a portrait that does full justice to its colourful and mercurial subject. It is a story which will enthral all those who watched and admired this golfing icon throughout his remarkable career.

SEVE

Golfs Flawed Genius

Robert Green

Copyright Robert Green 2012
The right of Robert Green to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form.
ISBN 978-1-78036-153-6
Main jacket image by David Cannon/Getty Images
Published by
Peach Publishing

For Jane, Ben and Sam

Do you want to know the great drama of my life? Its that I have put my genius into my life; all Ive put into my works is my talent.

Oscar Wilde

Introduction

Getting to Know the Man

In November 2007, his playing career consigned to history, Severiano Ballesteros was the recipient of the Trofeo Driver Award, given annually by the Basque Golf Federation. The presentation was in San Sebastian and, naturally, they got Jos Maria Olazbal, his long-time Ryder Cup partner and compatriot, who was born just outside the city, to do the honours. This was teed up as if Olazbal could not be there, and he was shown on a film clip apologising for his absence and also apparently taking a phone call from Tiger Woods to arrange a game of golf. Jos Maria then looked into the camera and said: But I cant do that to you, whereupon he walked out from behind the screen to hand over in person the prize to the man who will forever be the genius-in-chief of European golf.

I am writing this in July 2014. In its original form, this book was published in 2006, updated two years later. A great deal has happened since then, even though Seve Ballesteros is no longer alive. He died, aged 54, in May 2011. Since Europe last won the Ryder Cup in America, for the fourth time ever and on this occasion under the captaincy of Seves great friend, Jos Maria Olazbal, in circumstances which clich almost demands we describe as being an ending which no Hollywood scriptwriter would dare imagine, it really is time to update the tale again.

After Europe retained the Ryder Cup in Chicago on 30 September 2012, Olazbal said to his team at the closing ceremony: All men die and not all men live. And you made me feel alive once again this week. His team applauded wildly. Before he could say more, the (by this time predominantly European-supporting) crowd broke into a spontaneous chant of Seve, Seve, Seve, Seve. After a short pause, Olazbal said: Im very sure hes very happy where he is today.

In the history of top-level international sport, I doubt that ever before has a posthumous figure been eulogised so frequently, so genuinely and so handsomely by the competitions participants. But thats Seve for you. The story of his immense role in the creation, existence and flourishing of the modern Ryder Cup will be told later on. It was a fundamental contribution, forged in the intense crucible that was Seves heart and soul.

Olazbal once said to me: You may think you are a competitive person, but when you play with Seve, you realise there is another level. And so it was. In The Fight , his book about the extraordinary Muhammad Ali/George Foreman Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire in 1974, Norman Mailer wrote of Ali: What is genius but balance on the edge of the impossible? Thats a fitting thought for this book, too. Part of Seves skill was to make the seemingly impossible seem routine. And there was more to the connection than that. Ali was one of Seves very few idols. A back injury incurred while boxing as a 14-year-old blighted Seves career; not to the grotesque extent the sport so horribly assaulted Alis wellbeing, but nevertheless to the long-term detriment of his own special gifts.

And Seve knew about fighting. He fought against class prejudice to gain acceptance at his golf club. He fought for and against the European Tour. He fought Americas administrators off the course and its golfers in the Ryder Cup. He fought countless perceived adversaries, some real and some imaginary. He fought his own technical shortcomings to make himself one of the finest golfers ever, arguably the most charismatically entertaining in the history of the game. At the end, an end that lasted for more than two and a half years, from October 2008 to May 2011, he fought against his illness. Oh yes, the fight was something Seve was hugely familiar with. It was sometimes said that his best position was beside himself.

The fight was his motivation and inspiration to greatness. What highlights there were. There was his first Open Championship title, in 1979; two triumphs in the Masters, three years apart; victory in the 1984 Open at St Andrews, the circumstance of his most glorious pomp; his Open triumph on his return to Lytham in 1988, the last of his five major championships; 1995, the year of his last tournament win and the year he played a remarkable role as Europe regained the Ryder Cup in his last appearance in the competition as a player; 1997, the year he captained the European Ryder Cup team an entity which he did more than anyone else to bring about to success in Spain.

In July 2007, almost precisely ten years after he captained that victorious Ryder Cup team, Seve announced his retirement from competitive golf. In fact, pretty much from golf, period. At an emotionally charged press conference ahead of the Open Championship at Carnoustie, he explained his decision.